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TIL in 1977, Ben Cohen was a struggling potter & Jerry Greenfield was getting rejected by medical schools. The pair decided to open a bagel shop, but the cost of bagel machines was too high. As a result, they enrolled in a $5 ice cream making course instead. A year later, they created Ben & Jerry's

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m6Ly TIL California’s largest body of water, the Salton Sea, was created by an engineering mistake. Irrigation canals were dug from the Colorado river to the Salton sink. When the river flooded a dyke was breached and the entire Colorado river poured into the sink making the sea.
EgrBo TIL before he could start editing and technically enhancing the "Get Back" documentary Peter Jackson first had to listen to 130 hours of audio and watch 57 hours of film footage of the Beatles writing and rehearsing
YPbx TIL the boy scouts, who don’t allow gay leaders and only recently have allowed gay scouts, was founded by a gay combat veteran.
YpjeP TIL farmers in Africa use beehives to protect their crops from the largest and arguably most destructive crop pest in Africa: the elephant. Bees can’t sting through their thick hides but they can sting sensitive areas like the eyes, mouth, and inner trunk - they hear the hive buzzing and flee.
Y7P6v TIL Antonie van Leeuwenhoek handcrafted his microscopes using secret methods. They had powers of magnification ranging from 50 to 300x and the instrument he made in 1677 was powerful enough to see sperm